Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Tables Kent Conrad’s Budget

A couple of days ago Senator Kent Conrad, no doubt desperate for some semblance of relevance in the on-going budget battles in Washington DC, announced that he’d be introducing a budget this week. But now he isn’t, and reading between the lines here a bit (and keeping in mind Harry Reid’s repeated snubs of Conrad), it’s pretty clear that the Senate Majority Leader told Conrad to table his budget.

Which is just as well as the budget was just for show anyway, though that in and of itself is a big blow to Conrad’s ego after the retiring Senator said he’d spend the last months of the Senate career he has always claimed was dedicated to fiscal matters throwing himself into the budget isue and the national debt crisis.

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) won’t unveil his budget to the public this week after all, aides said Thursday.

Conrad had said earlier in the day that the timing would be decided by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid after the Nevada Democrat and other Congressional leaders attended a morning meeting at the White House about raising the debt limit and reducing the deficit.

Keeping the budget under wraps may be a sign of progress in the larger debt talks. That’s because the Democratic budget plan is just for show — there are no plans yet for a markup or to bring the plan to the Senate floor. Even if Democrats did move forward with the measure, they probably wouldn’t have the votes for passage in the Senate, and the proposal would be dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House.

Far from being the powerful, influential political insider he’s always claimed at the end of his career it’s clear that Conrad is nothing more than a partisan foot soldier.

Rob Port is the editor of SayAnythingBlog.com. In 2011 he was a finalist for the Watch Dog of the Year from the Sam Adams Alliance and winner of the Americans For Prosperity Award for Online Excellence. In 2013 the Washington Post named SAB one of the nation's top state-based political blogs, and named Rob one of the state's best political reporters.